No Big Winners, Several Stumbles

No Big Winners, Several Stumbles

I’m not sure anybody won this debate. I think Romney was, for the first time in any of these debates, made to look vulnerable. I think some of the hits stuck to him, and rocked him on his heels. I thought Gingrich looked and sounded like “Mean Newt,” without offering much of a positive vision. Perry was pretty solid, but he increasingly seems irrelevant. Paul and Huntsman were Paul and Huntsman, which doesn’t do anything to change the race. And on substance, I thought Santorum was very, very solid throughout, especially on his answers on homosexuality and on the importance of family issues — but he fell back into his habit of looking and sounding grim, not at all buoyant — even though his family message can and should sound buoyant rather than like lecturing. I think Romney is lucky this debate was early Sunday morning, because otherwise he might drop. Nobody else gained much, and Gingrich also might have lost a little.

Quin Hillyer
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Hillyer was born and raised in New Orleans and graduated from the Isidore Newman School in 1982 before matriculating at Georgetown University, where he graduated with an A.B. in government ...
@QuinHillyer

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